Vital City: Holistic Safety in Corrections: A Framework for Sustainable Change

Our Managing Director of Justice Initiatives Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia wrote this op-ed in the latest journal for Vital City .

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Chicago Beyond rethought jails and prisons by tackling trauma

In 2018, I retired as the warden of the Cook County jail in Chicago. During my tenure as warden, the jail ended a seven-year consent decree with the Department of Justice that charged the jail with inadequately protecting people incarcerated from physical harm. The kinds of harm included excessive uses of force by officers against those incarcerated, violence between people incarcerated, inadequate medical and mental healthcare that included suicide prevention, inadequate fire safety measures and sanitation deficiencies. The court lifted the decree because the jail had met — and exceeded — its provisions by effecting a complete overhaul of everything from security and grievance procedures to healthcare, food service, laundry and environmental safety.

I was appointed the chief psychologist of the jail just three months after the consent decree was filed in 2010, and I was overwhelmed by the problem that was before us. Many of the jail’s policies and practices were demoralizing and dehumanizing at that time, and we justified that they were necessary for safety. The reality was that even with the strictest of security practices, people incarcerated and staff were still assaulting each other and people from both groups were dying by suicide to escape it all. In 2015, I was appointed the warden of the jail. At that time, major shifts to policies and practices had been made, but violence remained a significant issue. It wasn’t until we broke through the silos that existed between security and healthcare within the jail and between the jail and the larger criminal justice system that we began to experience some sustained progress. The greatest reprieve from the violence within the jail occurred when the courts made bail reforms that significantly reduced the number of people coming into the jail and when they moved cases along that had been in pre-trial status for years. By safely reducing the demand on the jail, our criminal justice system partners provided opportunities for the jail’s reforms to take root.

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